Timeline for Is it right to use the structure "to take long" that way?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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| Nov 9, 2015 at 14:16 | comment | added | John Lawler | That's right. Negation is a bigger and more complex topic than you might have expected. It's at least as important as tenses are; all languages have negatives, but there are lots of languages without tenses. | |
| Nov 9, 2015 at 13:01 | comment | added | Peter Ferrer | Therefore I should have written "I took a long time in the bank because there were so many people in the queue", right? In a nutshell, we can only use the structure "to take long" either in questions or negative sentences (or negative contexts as you said) According to the Macmillan dictionary, "be/take long" are used that way. The sentences "Brides take too long to apply make-up" and "Windows is an operating system which usually takes longer to start than Mac OS" are not negative per se. However, there is a negative context in both cases. Is that right? | |
| Nov 8, 2015 at 4:11 | history | answered | John Lawler | CC BY-SA 3.0 |